The functions of body movement are a major psychotherapeutic and pedagogical tool of utmost importance in daily life and in sports either at the grassroots level as a professional. Psychomotor part of two concepts that come together: neurology and psychology
From the neurological perspective refers to three systems it is:
From psychology, body movement is considered as a form of expression and communication that allows contact with the outside, settling and acting on the outside world. This movement is articulated by three factors.
We have to take into account the evolution and change that occurs over time in our motor skills because of a genesis and maturation they pass through various stages.
The key elements of motor skills are:
Muscle tone: evolves throughout life, but the first months are therefore important relevance.
Harmony kinetics: encandenar gestural movements or motors in time and space.
The term motor skills was first coined by
Other authors have shaped the concept:
Jean Piaget: movement and action as the source of the development of intelligence.
Henri Wallon noted the importance of the tonic role in communication and emotions.
Sigmund Freud: the body is the place where unconscious drives and symptoms, translation of a psychic conflict manifest.
Julian de Ajuriaguerra institutes motor skills as an original and specific practice. States that allow bodily symptoms reach the core of the problem, which is usually located in the tonic-emotional origin of the relationship control.
Ajuriaguerra defines the concepts of the present motor skills:
Psychomotor development stages
Psychomotor early childhood (0-3 years)
Phases of the body schema
Body awareness (3-7 years)
Knowledge representation and body (7-12 years) own
This stage can be divided into three sub-stages or successive stage.
Substage reflection | Impulsive stadium
The first is called by Wallon stadium as impulsive or reflex level according to Piaget. In any case, it is characterized by the predominance of interoceptive and proprioceptive sensations. Disappear primitive reflexes and learned or conditioned reflexes, linked to maintenance and postural vital needs of the baby appear.
Emotional substage
By six months an emotional substage, named for Wallon appears. Dominated by a tonic function organized interoceptive and proprioceptive systems. Here the origin of the first emotions stands and leads to dialogue tonic baby-mother as the first form of human communication.
Sensorimotor substage | Mirror Stage
Later we find the sensorimotor stage, named for Piaget. It continues until the end of the second year and is characterized by the appearance and development of psychomotor activity. This activity takes place in two directions:
Space exploration and manipulation of objects
tonic postural activity.
Important functions developed in this period are the Auto Scroll (crawling, walking and running) grip, and the passage of locomotor space next to space.
According to Jacques Lacan and his psiconanálisis, we find at this stage the development of the mirror stage, as decisive experience for the recognition of the body, the integration of body image and the encounter with the other’s desire.
For Piaget, it is the time of sensorimotor intelligence. The child performs acts with a certain logic practice, imitates gestures and expressions that can be considered as a preamble of representation.
Projective substage
It appears in the second year and continues for the third. The activity goes from sensorimotor to ideomotor. Mental images are projected into action. The type of activity most commonly used is the imitation of gestures and attitudes, thus developing representative capacity. the walking and running, dynamic balance and postural control is perfected.
With this stage the stage of lived experience body, which can be considered the first sketch of body schema is closed.
The next two phases can frame within the phases of development of the body schema.
[Mks_pullquote align = “left” width = “300” size = “24” bg_color = “# 000000” txt_color = “# ffffff”] The body schema is the perception conscious and unconscious as well as knowledge and representation of the body. [/ mks_pullquote]Proper construction of the body schema depends on four factors:
Global engine development and engine proper organization of the levels, sensory and perceptive.
Affective investimento’s own body.
The ideational function.
Integrity and maturation of the nerve centers.
Ajuriagerra in 1970, distinguishes three stages in the construction of the body schema:
Lived body stage (0-3 years)
Perceptual discrimination stage (3-7 years)
Stage of mental representation and understanding of the body
Perfecting a motor is essentially playful and enjoyable. In her child’s body it is also presented as issuer of symbolic play in the measure representing objects with gestures and actions of people.
The evolution of the perception of the body goes to discriminate against different parts of it, within the concept of unity as overall body structure. This perception is given by associating visual and kinesthetic data, and by verbalizing different parts of the body that promotes mental representation. It is around six years old when the child may already have a good topological representation of your body and its parts.
Oriented space is brewing in the body itself, organizing from it, the reference axes. The trunk and legs materialize the vertical; arms outstretched, horizontal. From these axes right and left, in front and behind targets. 6-7 years child has internalized the body axis and this body can project outward orientation. the final lateralization is acquired with the resulting lateral dominance of the right or left.
The mental representation of the body is possible thanks to a double body image:
Postural scheme, which represents the static stability.
The dynamic image corresponding to the scheme in action.
The child of 7-8 years can be placed in reference to objects and put these in relation to each other. Moreover, symbolic representation allows space operations represented on a virtual space.
The most significant training time reaches about twelve years. The boy, already in preadolescence, can integrate data of lived experience with perceptual and cognitive data, necessary for the emotional and intellectual unity of a person. Your own image is already rich in detail.
